Luke Russert, son of the late moderator of “Meet the Press” Tim Russert, touches the empty chair that was left behind by his father on the set of the show after a taping of “Meet the Press” in memory of Russert in Washington June 15, 2008.

Something seems a little out of whack between the mainstream media and the American people. Take the arguments of the past few days over former President Jimmy Carter’s remarks about the Bush administration and the consequences of its particular brand of foreign policy. Carter didn’t attack President Bush personally, but said that “as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” which can’t really be too far out of line with what many Americans think.(more…)

The world may be flat, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has written, but I always liked to think I was standing on a hill. Now comes the news that pasadenanow.com, a local news site, is recruiting reporters in India. The website’s editor points out that he can get two Indian reporters for a mere $20,800 a year – and no, they won’t be commuting from New Delhi.

Three established U.S. newspapers, two of them among the 10 largest in the country, in three different states have in the past weeks abandoned their century-old support of the death penalty and become passionate advocates of a ban on state-sponsored killing.

SOMEHOW it’s hard to imagine David Halberstam yukking it up with Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz and two discarded “American Idol” contestants at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Before there was a Woodward and Bernstein, there was Halberstam, still not yet 30 in the early 1960s, calling those in power to account for lying about our “progress” in Vietnam. He did so even though J.F.K. told the publisher of The Times, “I wish like hell that you’d get Halberstam out of there.” He did so despite public ridicule from the dean of that era’s Georgetown punditocracy, the now forgotten columnist (and Vietnam War cheerleader) Joseph Alsop.(more…)

Watch “Buying the War,” a 90-minute documentary that explores the role of the press in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, which includes interviews with Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of Meet the Press; and Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN.

Two days later on April 27, BILL MOYERS JOURNAL airs at its regular timeslot on Fridays at 9 P.M. with interviews and news analysis of underreported stories across an array of beats, including: the environment, media, politics, the economy, arts and culture, and social issues.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and tireless author of books on topics as varied as America’s military failings in Vietnam, the deaths of firefighters at the World Trade Center and the high-pressure world of professional basketball, was killed Monday in a car crash south of San Francisco. He was 73, and lived in Manhattan.

“If you’re a reporter, the easiest thing in the world is to get a story. The hardest thing is to verify. The old sins were about getting something wrong, that was a cardinal sin. The new sin is to be boring.“

After initially being denied an extra week of leave, Robinson told The Decatur Daily on Thursday he now expects that he won’t be returning to Iraq but will be at a U.S. base for his final five months in the Army.

Imagine if the audience’s appetite for outrage extended to the dying of American democracy. Imagine if media bosses believed that we’re insatiable for information about the Republican attempt to rig the ’08 election by politicizing the Justice Department and prosecuting phony voter fraud. Imagine if the same kind of blanket coverage that’s currently conferred on loopy astronauts, bratty rehaboholics, and, yes, outrageously slandered basketball teams, were afforded instead to the slow-motion fascism now on the move in America. Would we watch it the same Pavlovian way we watch tits, twits and tornadoes?

Leaks, backgrounders, favors, masked attribution: For decades, journalists and government officials have traded in a sort of information black market, manipulating one another and, to some extent, readers too. It’s not pretty — as the Libby trial revealed. But it’s crucial.

In 1998, the Cincinnati Enquirer published an 18-page expose of Chiquita’s dealings in Latin America. The paper found that Chiquita exposed entire communities to dangerous U.S.-banned pesticides, forced the eviction of an entire Honduran village at gunpoint, suppressed unions and paid a fortune to
U.S. politicians to influence trade policy. The Enquirer was later forced to issue a front-page apology and pay Chiquita a reported $14 million after it was revealed the lead reporter, Mike Gallagher, illegally accessed more than 2,000 Chiquita voice mails.

The Washington Post’s editorial page parroted George W. Bush’s lies in the run-up to the Iraq War and has continued to carry White House water in the years since. Even recently, the Post’s editorials have disparaged former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose CIA wife Valerie Plame was outed by Bush officials. Now with a congressional hearing establishing key facts about Plame’s CIA duties, the Post’s editorials stand fully exposed. Is it time finally to demand accountability from the Post and the firing of editorial page editor Fred Hiatt?

US Senator Mike Gravel spoke at the DNC winter meeting standing next to Howard Dean and was at the Nevada candidate’s forum with Hillary Clinton, Edwards and the others and he’s been invited to ABC’s debates, but CNN has barred former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel from their New Hampshire debate, without giving a reason.

“I’ll drink it,” she said. “You have to submit to the will of the people, and apparently this is the will of my peers. It’s OK with me. I’ve had a good run in the front seat.”
Typical of Bushco. No class.

A Philippines journalist protesting killings of journalists in the country. International press watchdogs, including the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, have branded the Philippines the second most dangerous place for journalists, next to Iraq.(AFP/File/Joel Nito)

… the Reagan people were using this phrase, “perception management.” They understood that if you could manage the perceptions of the American people through the information they got, making sure it was only your side of the story and that the facts from the ground were filtered out, then they could control the American population. They did not want to see Vietnam again. If they had to do foreign policy interventions, they didn’t want the American people to become an obstacle to them.

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